Large earthquakes within stable continental regions (SCR) show that significant amounts of elastic strain can be released on geological structures far from plate boundary faults, where the vast majority of the Earth's seismic activity takes place. SCR earthquakes show spatial and temporal patterns that differ from those at plate boundaries and occur in regions where tectonic loading rates are negligible. However, in the absence of a more appropriate model, they are traditionally viewed as analogous to their plate boundary counterparts, occurring when the accrual of tectonic stress localized at long‐lived active faults reaches failure threshold. Here we argue that SCR earthquakes are better explained by transient perturbations of local stress or fault strength that release elastic energy from a prestressed lithosphere. As a result, SCR earthquakes can occur in regions with no previous seismicity and no surface evidence for strain accumulation. They need not repeat, since the tectonic loading rate is close to zero. Therefore, concepts of recurrence time or fault slip rate do not apply. As a consequence, seismic hazard in SCRs is likely more spatially distributed than indicated by paleoearthquakes, current seismicity, or geodetic strain rates.

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The oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica represents an environmentally friendly platform cell factory for β-carotene production. However, Y. lipolytica is a dimorphic species that can undergo a yeast-to-mycelium transition when exposed to stress. The mycelial form is unfavorable for industrial fermentation. In this study, β-carotene-producing Y. lipolytica strains were constructed via the integration of multiple copies of 13 genes related to the β-carotene biosynthesis pathway. The β-carotene content increased by 11.7-fold compared with the start strain T1. As the β-carotene content increased, the oval-shaped yeast form was gradually replaced by hyphae, implying that the accumulation of β-carotene in Y. lipolytica induces a morphological transition. To relieve this metabolic stress, the strains were morphologically engineered by deleting CLA4 and MHY1 genes to convert the mycelium back to the yeast form, which further increased the β-carotene production by 139%. In fed-batch fermentation, the engineered strain produced 7.6 g/L and 159 mg/g DCW β-carotene, which is the highest titer and content reported to date. The morphological engineering strategy developed here may be useful for enhancing chemical synthesis in dimorphic yeasts.

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A proximity hybridization-triggered signal switch was presented for convenient homogeneous chemiluminescent detection of a wide range of affinity target biomolecules, such as oligonucleotides, protein biomarkers, and aptamer-recognized targets. The presence of the target promoted the formation of a proximate complex via the proximity hybridization of two help DNA strands or the DNA strands labeled to affinity ligands, which subsequently unfolded the self-reporting molecular beacon to switch on the chemiluminescence signal. The response could be further amplified with an in situ enzymatic recycling strategy for highly sensitive chemiluminescence detection. By using an antibody as the affinity ligand, this simple protocol could sensitively detect protein biomarker in a concentration range of 6 orders of magnitude with a detection limit down to 80 fM. With the use of an aptamer as the affinity ligand, a method for homogeneous chemiluminescent detection of thrombin was proposed. The one-step and wash-free assay showed good selectivity and required only 1 μL of sample. Its high sensitivity, acceptable accuracy, and satisfactory versatility of analytes led to various applications in bioanalysis.